The need for the disjunction phrases in the legal contract

Abstract

Abstract The article discusses some questions that rise while referring to the disjunction phrases or, and/or in the Hebrew legal contract. It examines their role and points the linguistic functions they have in this contract, and also checks the necessity of the phrase and/or. The disjunction phrases or, and/or are very common in legal texts, and possess different functions, some of which are related to logic and semantics, and some that are related to syntax and pragmatics. With the help of pragmatic knowledge of the verbal context, external circumstances, the unique genre and especially the addresser-addressee relations some interpretations can be given to the role of these two disjunction phrases. The use of the disjunction phrases or, and/or and the linguistic interpretations that are yield at the research, are special and even surprising, but logical. It is noticeable precisely in such a type of discourse which supposed to be most accurate in order to prevent interpretation problems. The person drafting the contract uses the disjunction phrases as a technique to form vagueness or ambiguity in those places where he wants to control the contract’s details and to “leave the key” in his own hands in case the other side wants to interpret the contract in a different way.